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Mock Caviar

A mock caviar made from herring, milk, lemon, onion, served with bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mock Caviar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herrings

  1. Clean and soak the herrings in water for a couple of hours.

  2. Lay the herrings in lukewarm milk for five hours.

  3. Remove the skin and bones from the herrings, then chop them very fine.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix the chopped herrings with the finely chopped onion and lemon juice.

  2. Serve with bread and fresh butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Provide the main body and flavour of the caviar once chopped fine.
Milk
Soaking in lukewarm milk mellows the fish's strong, oily taste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances its richness.
Onion
Adds sharp aroma and a pungent bite that contrasts with the fish.

The step that matters

Chopping the herrings very fine. Fine chopping gives the mixture the small, grainy, spreadable texture of caviar. Coarse pieces stay chunky and less cohesive, so the finished spread feels uneven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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